9: The Blue Dog
I went back into Ormskirk on the Saturday morning to do the big supermarket shop while Ma minded Stella … or perhaps that was the other way round? Anyway, they intended going to the studio to paint and Hal had promised to come over later with an old wasp’s nest as big as a football to show her, so it looked like being a red-letter day.
I only hoped Ma would remember the sandwiches I’d left them for lunch and not just share endless cups of sweet tea and biscuits with Stella. I wanted her to have more energy, but not a permanent sugar high!
Somehow I found my steps taking me past the Happy Macaroon, but this time Jago Tremayne wasn’t looking out of the window, probably because it was so busy in the shop that the queue came right out of the door.
For the first time I noticed a sign for the Blue Dog Café next door to it and went up a steep, narrow flight of stairs into a busy room humming with conversation and the rattle of cutlery. It was obviously very popular and after I’d looked about fruitlessly for a vacant table I was just about to give up and go away again when suddenly I spotted Jago Tremayne sitting at a table in the far corner. He looked up and waved, smiling warmly, and I looked round to see if someone else had followed me up: but no, he was waving at me, so I made my way across.
‘I just spotted you – do please join me,’ he said, nudging out the chair next to his. Then he looked at me diffidently. ‘I mean – you do remember me, don’t you? It’s Jago, from the bakery next door.’
‘Of course I remember you, and it’s very kind of you to let me share your table. I was just about to give up and go away again.’
I sat down and he handed me the menu. ‘It’s all cold food apart from the soup of the day, but they do a great beef sandwich with horseradish sauce.’
‘Sounds good to me – I’ll have that,’ I said, as the waitress came to take my order, ‘and a large Americano with some cold milk.’
I felt guilty spending any money on myself like this, when it might go into Stella’s fund, but Celia had made me promise to be nicer to myself after I told her I’d been taking a flask of coffee out with me everywhere to save money. She said treating myself to coffee and a bun once in a blue moon might mean the difference to my staying sane or completely losing it, so it would be worthwhile in the long run. She was probably right, but it still felt a bit guilt-inducing.
‘Stella not with you today?’ Jago asked.
‘No, I’ve left her at home with my mother and come in to do the big supermarket shop on my own. She tires easily, but she hates sitting in the trolley and I can’t carry her and push it at the same time. Ma would rather keep an eye on her than shop, but she’s an artist, so when she’s wrapped up in her work she tends to be a bit forgetful …’
‘I’m sure Stella will be all right,’ he said reassuringly. ‘She seems like a child who’ll say if she wants anything.’
‘Oh, yes, she can be a real bossy boots – and she was certainly determined to get one of those gingerbread pigs, wasn’t she? And she ate most of it. I offered to make her some, but no, she says yours are special, so I suppose I’d better take one back with me today.’
‘I’ll send you the recipe, if you give me your email address?’ he suggested.
‘I’d love the recipe, but I don’t think even then I can compete with the lure of yours.’
‘I’ve left David in charge of the shop while I have my lunch,’ Jago said. ‘It’s really busy on Saturdays, but his fiancée, Sarah, comes for the weekends to help out. In fact, I tend to feel a bit of a spare part and I’ll feel even more so when Sarah gives up her job and moves into the flat over the shop with us permanently.’
‘I suppose three is a crowd, even if they don’t mean to make you feel left out.’
‘It doesn’t help that I got disengaged about the same time David proposed to Sarah,’ he said, and his thin, handsome face became gloomy. ‘Very disengaged.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said sincerely.
‘Don’t be, because she went off with another man a couple of weeks before the wedding, so it was better she did it then than after we were married.’
‘That’s true, I suppose, though it doesn’t stop it hurting, does it? I was engaged before I had Stella, but my fiancée signed up for a second long contract abroad without telling me and then dumped me for someone else he’d met out there.’
Jago raised his coffee cup. ‘Here’s to a fresh start for both of us, then,’ he said, and smiled at me. His mouth went up a bit at the left corner when he smiled and so did the corner of his eyebrow on that side. I found myself smiling back.
‘So, how did the Happy Macaroon come about?’ I asked. ‘I’ve only just emailed David my questions for the article.’
‘It was literally a stroke of luck. We both worked for Gilligan’s, as you know, and we were in the lottery ticket syndicate when our numbers came up.’
‘Wow!’ I said enviously.
‘It wasn’t millions, nothing like that, but our shares were enough to change our lives, if we wanted them to. Some of the older members of the syndicate just paid off their mortgages and took holidays, or bought new cars, but David and I decided we wanted to get out of London and set up our own businesses.’
‘Great idea.’
‘David found his premises first, so I came up to help him start off and fell in love with the area. Now I’m hoping to find somewhere nearby to run my croquembouche wedding cake business, and the sooner the better. We thought it would take quite a while to get the Happy Macaroon off the ground, but actually business took off like a rocket from the first day.’
‘But what made him choose Ormskirk? When I heard about the shop, it seemed the most unlikely place – yet I can see it’s a huge success.’
‘David comes from Southport and fell for the old bakery after he spotted it on the internet, and luckily there was an empty flat above it, too. What about you,’ he asked tentatively, ‘why did you move up here?’
‘I sold my flat near Primrose Hill and we moved in with my mother because I needed to raise some capital quickly to fund treatment for Stella.’ I took a sip of coffee, which was strong and good. ‘Perhaps you noticed how small and frail she looks for her age?’
He nodded, his eyes soft and sympathetic.
‘It’s because she was born with a heart condition, a serious and complicated one.’
‘Hence the hospital appointments you mentioned? I’m so sorry – it must be an enormous worry to you and she’s such a bright, lovely little girl.’
‘Yes, it is,’ I confessed. ‘The hospital here has taken over monitoring her progress, but they’d really like her to put on some weight before she goes to America in autumn for an operation … It’s very risky, you see, experimental surgery, but without it the consultant in London said that eventually her organs would begin to suffer under the strain of coping.’
I don’t know what came over me, but I found myself
